


Copernicus

by Itohan



Series: To walk amongst the stars (Star Wars AU’s) [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dark Anakin Skywalker, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Kidnapping, Movie: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Nightmares, Obsession, POV Darth Vader, POV Sabé, Past Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Past Padmé Amidala/Sabé, Planet Naboo (Star Wars), Possessive Anakin Skywalker, Possessive Behavior, Post-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Psychological Torture, Stockholm Syndrome, Suited Darth Vader, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26531131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itohan/pseuds/Itohan
Summary: Padmé had been Anakin’s sun, his sole light in darkness. But it wasn’t enough to save him.She first returns in their son, in those quivering lips facing him on Bespin, denying their shared blood.Then she follows him into his dreams, tears falling out of her eyes as she dies over and over again.When Vader finds Sabé, he feels as if Padmé has finally come back to life to haunt him. He wants her to feel every ounce of pain he feels when he has to look at her, wants her to feel every bit the ghost she is. So he takes her with him.
Relationships: Darth Vader/Sabé, Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Darth Vader, Sabé & Darth Vader, Sabé/Anakin Skywalker, implied Sabé/Padmé Amidala
Series: To walk amongst the stars (Star Wars AU’s) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1759843
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	Copernicus

# Copernicus

_“Why must I keep dying?” Padmé asks, black tears staining her cheeks._

From their first encounter Padmé had been pulling him into her orbit. Anakin, he let himself fall into the pull and rotated around her, always wanting to get closer. But he wasn’t the only one in her orbit. He never had been. People gravitated towards her, wanted her to be the star they danced around. Yet he was the only one to feel her soft lips on his like a cool ocean breeze.

It wasn’t enough.

She first returns in their son, in those quivering lips facing him on Bespin, denying their shared blood. Then she follows him into his dreams, tears falling out of her eyes as she dies over and over again. He can’t stop her, he can’t **save** her...  
He feverishly intensifies his search for **his** son- his to love and to cherish. A dead woman cannot claim a child. Luke will become his student like Ahsoka once was, only that he won’t leave him. He can’t, Vader will not allow it! He needs him! His son will one day look at him with Padmé’s kind eyes and right every wrong, he will absolve Vader of his pain and free him of his shackles. Luke will ease his nightmares.

When Vader finds Sabé, he feels as if Padmé has finally come back to life to haunt him. Her eyes are Padmé’s, her hair, those lips... He cannot kill her again even if it is just a ghost wearing her face. That’s all that woman is to Vader, a ghost - a ghost of the could have been’s he had wished for. Now for the second time his wife has come back to terrorize him. Would the pain disappear if neither Luke or Sabé lived to be a reminder of her death? He secretly wishes for the strength kill both of them but he knows he won‘t.

At first he hates her. He hates her with every fiber of his being, hates her with all that is left of his soul. How dare she live while Padmé rots? He want to rip her face to shreds until it doesn’t taunt him anymore with every frown, every tear that escapes that should have been Padmé’s.

So he takes her with him, bound and shackled, a mirror of the man underneath his mask. She doesn’t look at him when she sits down besides him on his ship. Her eyes belong to Naboo’s people, she says. What she means is that her eyes belong to Padmé but she leaves those words unsaid. Instead Sabé’s gaze turns towards her reflection in the windows whenever Vader addresses her. She’s always preferred to look at Padmé, even when her queen was still alive. They were two halves of the same coin, only belonging to each other. Now only the woman in the mirror belongs to Sabé, the distorted image never looking quite right enough to truly be her, so she pretends the woman is Padmé instead.

He wants her to feel every ounce of pain he feels when he has to look at her, wants her to feel every bit the ghost she is. He locks her into a room of mirrors, only letting her out after her voice has gone hoarse and she has no more tears to cry. She doesn’t ever look at her reflection the same way again. Now there’s nowhere for her to look but him.

When he hears rumors of rebels taking refuge on Naboo, Vader takes Sabé with him to find his son. The night before his ship arrives on Naboo he dreams of a future, a vision he now desperately craves more and more with every passing day that his son evades him. He will have the family he once dreamed of, Sabé, Luke and him, it is the will of the force. Anakin had always gravitated towards strong people, people that pulled him into their orbit. In the end they always ended up caving in under his pressure, even Padmé. Sabé and Luke would too. They were going to be Vader’s suns and he’d be there to orbit around them. He would not be denied.

He takes Sabé to the place where he spent the happiest days of his life, wants to make her understand why it has to be her by his side.

She eyes the white roses with such adoration that he almost believes her to be Padmé. Only Padmé would have held such love for even the smallest of all flowers. His leather clad fingers twitch to pluck the most beautiful of those roses, a flower befitting of a queen. She would look beautiful, he thinks, if she’d wear it in her hair.

Instead he burns down the meadow until every last petal has been turned into ash. He turns his head so he doesn’t have see her cry. 

When she cries, Padmé cries with her.

It’s many months later when the nightmares have long been forgotten and Sabé’s given up on killing him that he finally tells her about his son.

“What is he like?” She asks quietly, her hands shaking as they finger a lock of her hair.

Padmé had never sounded so meek.  
Sabé does as she rests in bed, her head lying on his lap while she burns with fever. 

Sabé had always been a sick child. Padmé had once been told that by Sabé’s mother as the old woman stroked through her daughter’s hair. Now all those years later Sabé can’t think of anything but that night. She had been incredibly sick, so sick that the Palace staff feared for her death. But not for her sake, for Padmé’s. They feared for their queen’s safety without her decoy. Only Padmé had worried for Sabé and held her hand. She had been the one to call the young girl’s mother to the palace. 

That night had been the closest Sabé came to death in her life, until she met Vader.

Had Padmé been the same? Had she also lied sick in childhood and prayed to survive another day? No, Sabé softly shakes her head, Padmé was too strong for that. She would have fought and not lied in defeat like Sabè.

“He is everything Padmé wished he would be,” Vader answers and cups her cheek.

Sabé smiles.

The very same night Vader dreams of his wife’s ghost coming to haunt him in his sleep again.  
_“I’ll do anything for your forgiveness, for you to stop plaguing my dreams! Tell me what I can do, Padmé. Tell me!”_  
The ghost doesn’t answer.

When Vader wakes, Sabé’s skin has turned cold and her chest lies still, no breath escaping her. She is beautiful even in death. He buries his hands in her dark curls, imagines white roses in them as he kisses every strand of hair. He has never hated his mask more.

He lays her to rest on Naboo, allows her to sleep eternally underneath those white roses she loved so very much. Amidala has finally returned to her people, both halves reunited in Naboo’s soil. They had always belonged to one another, Padmé and Sabé, Vader muses and the corners of his mouth almost turn upwards. 

_“Why?” Sabé cries out. Her hand reaches out, begs Vader to save her, but he **can’t**. Their fingers brush. Black tears gather in her eyes when the blue saber disappears into her chest._

_Vader locks eyes with the assailant. Anakin Skywalker stares back at him trough misted eyes and grasps Sabé’s limp body, his hands - human - digging into her flesh._

The nightmares return.

When Vader finally meets his son again, he wants to tell him about Padmé and Sabé, wants Luke to forgive him in their stead. Instead Luke forgives Anakin as his son, loves him unconditionally. It had always been Anakin underneath that mask, he realizes as he looks at his son with his own eyes. Luke looks so very much like him, but _she_ , she’s there too.

In his final moments Anakin thinks of white roses and a wooden necklace.  
He dies at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this AU suddenly came over me yesterday and I couldn’t shake it off! So I wrote this one shot instead of doing my homework or working on my other WIPs lmao


End file.
